On a recent muggy morning, a gliding kingfisher searched for its breakfast, a lone painted
turtle peeked above the murky water and a group of out-of-sight green frogs made their flicked
rubber band sound.

Those throaty croaks are music to Diana Morse’s ears.

“Amphibians are not doing as well as they could be,” said Morse, senior naturalist at
Blacklick Woods Metro Park. “Our green frogs seem to be doing pretty good.”

Experts have long worried about amphibians’ declining ranks, but government research has put
numbers to the growing concern.

Seven species of frogs, toads and salamanders face 50 percent population drops in the next
seven years if the current decline rate remains constant, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

An additional 40 or so species are declining at a much slower rate — 2.7 percent per year.
Current models suggest their populations will be cut in half in 27 years.

That’s a fraction of the about 7,000 amphibian species found worldwide. The United States is
home to about 300 species, and as many as 40 live in Ohio.

“The scientific community has known that amphibians were in trouble,” said Susan Walls, a
research wildlife biologist with the U.S. Geological Survey who worked on the study.

“We just had anecdotal reports. … We now have a quantitative estimate at how fast that they
are disappearing.”

For example, the Fowler’s toad and the Blanchard’s cricket frog, both found in Franklin
County, are among those fading fast. They are the two Ohio frog and toad species researchers are
most concerned about.

Why should you care? Some researchers see frogs as an “indicator species” — a canary in the
coal mine of sorts for water-pollution problems that could threaten humans.

“It comes back to the whole idea that everything is intertwined,” Walls said.

So what’s causing amphibians to disappear? That’s tricky, researchers say. Some species are
easier to read than others. And so far, there is no smoking gun.

In part, diseases such as amphibian chytrid fungus and ranavirus, both of which have been
documented in Ohio, could be blamed. So can climate change, some say.

But the most obvious indicator, many say, is urbanization.

“In Franklin County, you’re looking at massive habitat destruction,” said Jeff Davis, a
high-school science teacher in the Cincinnati area and founder of the Ohio Frog and Toad Calling
Survey, which monitors amphibians statewide.

“The little tiny wood lots and parks you have — they don’t have a big-enough buffer zone
around them to really protect amphibians.”

Still, conservationists have tried to make Franklin County a sustainable home for some
troubled amphibians. And some efforts have paid off.

For example, there has been a modest resurgence of the wood frog, which disappeared from
Franklin County more than three decades ago.

Thomas Hetherington, an Ohio State University biologist, spearheaded an effort to repopulate
the frogs.

His team gathered 150,000 wood frog eggs from vernal pools in Fairfield and Hocking counties
and placed them at shallow wetland areas in Blacklick Woods, Sharon Woods and Glacier Ridge.

The frogs didn’t take at Glacier Ridge, but they are holding on at Sharon Woods, Hetherington
said.

“One year we got some good reproduction, and the next year it was really down,” Hetherington
said. “Then the following year, reproduction popped up again, so it does fluctuate a bit. The
population did bounce back.”

He said he discovered 14 egg clusters at Blacklick Woods this year.

“The wood frog is actually a species that I point to as a success story,” said Gregory Lipps,
an Ohio herpetologist and a contributor to Amphibians of Ohio, a soon-to-be-released book. Davis
also is a co-author.

Lipps said it is the first major census of Ohio frogs and toads since the 1940s.

Wood frogs are tied to the amount of forest cover, which has steadily increased in Ohio since
the 1900s, Lipps said.

In fact, wood frogs have seen a sizable recovery throughout the state.

Other amphibians have not fared so well. Lipps said researchers have documented an 80 percent
decline in eastern hellbender salamanders from the mid-1980s to 2009.

And unlike wood frogs, many frog and toad species are declining for no apparent reason.

It’s a loss that experts already mourn.

“Tadpoles might be the first opportunity a young child has … to make a connection with
nature,” Walls said. “There are a lot of ways in which we could be at a loss.”